Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Late Fame:
The Christophers
The Christophers may not rank among Steven Soderbergh’s defining achievements, but it reminded me why his baseline remains so much higher than almost everyone else’s. It’s sharp, funny, surprisingly heartfelt, and has more to say about artistry, legacy, and the people who profit from both than most films on the subject ever attempt. Calling it “just another Soderbergh movie” sounds dismissive, but in practice, that’s still one of the stronger endorsements I can give.
A Poet
There’s a very specific subgenre of movie that lives and dies on how much time you can tolerate spending with a self-sabotaging mess of a person. The great ones make that discomfort feel like the point, while still giving you a rope to hold onto, whether it’s raw talent, an undeniable charisma, or a narrative engine that keeps the spiral from turning monotonous. Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet wants to sit in that lane, and for stretches it absolutely does. It is dry, awkward, and often sharply observed about ego and obsession. It is also, for me, a tough hang in a way that never quite alchemizes into something I’d want to revisit.
Mile End Kicks
This generation’s closest thing to Almost Famous, and honestly, more coming-of-age movies in the vein of Cameron Crowe or Richard Linklater or even contemporaries like Cooper Raiff or Greta Gerwig, I’m all in for. The screenplay, which started life under the working title Anglophone as the winner of a competition for emerging women screenwriters back in 2016, is based in part on Chandler Levack’s own early adulthood before becoming a professional music critic and filmmaker. That autobiographical grounding should give the film the kind of lived-in specificity that separates the great hangout movies from the good ones.
The Phoenician Scheme
The Phoenician Scheme finds Wes Anderson at perhaps his most emotionally direct since The Grand Budapest Hotel, yet without sacrificing the signature aesthetic and structural quirks that define his work. Where recent efforts like Asteroid City and The French Dispatch relied heavily on narrative framing devices, nested storytelling, and dense, text-heavy scripts, The Phoenician Scheme plays more like an emotional adventure story—a film that hits hardest on first viewing, even as it leaves behind layers to explore on rewatches.
I Saw the TV Glow
I Saw the TV Glow is one of the best movies of 2024, showcasing exactly what independent filmmaking can be when handled by the right people. A24 adds another riveting drama by a fascinating young auteur to their trophy case, and Jane Schoenbrun announces themselves as an important and singular filmmaker to look out for moving forward.
Nouvelle Vague
Nouvelle Vague may not feel strictly necessary, yet it is frequently absorbing and occasionally electric. It is a reminder that Richard Linklater keeps making movies because he likes to look closely, whether the subject is a barroom confession or the jittery birth of a classic. This one will not inspire a movement, and it does not try to, but it earns its place as a smart, modest riff on a seismic moment. By the time Breathless finally clicks into focus, you understand why the chaos mattered and why the gamble was worth it, even if the film around it plays as a minor, affectionate gloss.
Tony
Tony opens with a fitting quote from its titular subject, Anthony Bourdain, describing himself before he found his calling as a cook and decades before becoming one of the world’s most famous chefs: “I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” It’s a pretty perfect mission statement for Matt Johnson’s film, which is less interested in the finished Anthony Bourdain than the deeply uncertain young man who had to become him first.
Urchin
Urchin plays like an extension of the drifter persona Harris Dickinson has been honing on screen, only this time he is behind the camera shaping it into a patient, street level character study. The focus is Mike, played by Frank Dillane, a man whose addiction and relapses strip away the basics of living. Housing goes, work goes, the next hit keeps him moving.
Rye Lane
Few films in 2023 will reach the peaceful bliss that Hulu’s newest streamer Rye Lane does, a movie about two lost twenty-somethings recovering from painful breakups over the span of one eventful afternoon in South London. Told through an episodic lens that depicts the steps from heartbreak to a restored faith in relationships, Rye Lane is a cheerful reimagining of the romantic comedy.
Eternity
Eternity has a sweet, sentimental charm that fits David Freyne’s A24 rom-com mold, then asks a clever what-if of the afterlife. When you die, you enter a hub and choose where to spend forever. For Joan, played by Elizabeth Olsen, the question is less where than who. Freyne, working from a script co-written with Pat Cunnane, leans into humor and physical business rather than plumbing for deeper grief. The emotion largely comes from familiar highlight reels, meet cutes and proposal flashbacks that remind Joan what each love felt like in its best light. When the movie wants to go big, it does not hesitate.
READ MORE: Movies Like Mile End Kicks, Movies Like Tony
